updated 02:15 pm EDT, Fri June 12, 2009

Palm Shipping 100K Pres

Estimates by JPMorgan analyst Paul Coster published on Friday suggest that Palm may have already doubled its shipments of the Pre. Earlier predictions had Palm shipping as many as 55,000 units, but Coster concludes through studying retail activity that Palm has already shipped another 50,000 of the smartphones in less than a week. Many Sprint stores have received between 10 and 15 more phones every two days, while Radio Shack has also received an update. Unusually, Best Buy appears to have received none extra since the June 6th date.

These are often sold out quickly, but not necessarily to new customers, Coster says. He determines that most are going to those placed on waiting lists after each sell-out and that only a few from each batch are going to those who hadn't already committed to buying a Pre. To the analyst, it's difficult to gauge long-term demand from this as even Sprint is being "drip-fed" stock in varying numbers and intervals.

An accurate prediction would show sustained demand for the Pre despite both shortages and concerns that Apple's $99 iPhone 3G may cut into sales of the Pre to those leaving other cellular networks. Supply is nonetheless thought to be so constrained that Palm is stalling the Eos launch until it knows how many phones it can expect to sell.